CHAPTER 1
Tennalhin Halkana arrived at the party fashionably late, which might have meant something if he’d been invited in the first place. Tennal often set out to make trouble, it was true, but this evening, he was genuinely here for a drink and a good time.
That was a lie. He also wanted an architect, and this party would be full of architects.
The party was in the penthouse of the most exclusive hotel in the city. It was a glittering front for an underground gambling ring, so it was full of dangerous people, but Tennal had stopped caring who he mingled with some time ago. Tennal floated from one gambling meetup to another these days, always just interesting enough to be kept around, never involved enough to get in serious trouble. As a lifestyle, it had its ups and downs. As an escape plan, it was an amateur one, but he could keep it going as long as he had to. He just needed the right architect.
He didn’t risk the private drone service ferrying people up to the balcony. Instead Tennal flirted his way past security in the hotel lobby and walked into the elevator as if he belonged there. There was no security at the penthouse door. People didn’t go to this kind of party uninvited, but Tennal had found there were very few things you couldn’t do if you didn’t care about fucking up. Tennal was low on money, low on options, and didn’t have a lot left to lose.
The penthouse was a dark fug of noise and low-level sensory vibrations. It was dimly lit by colored glows under tables and light filaments like sprays of vivid flowers in the corners. Dozens of people gathered around various games, or the bar, or smaller tables where more serious business was being done. Under the talking and the music, there was the low, vibrating drone that people on certain chemical substances found enjoyably hypnotic. Some people were obviously high already. Tennal was envious.
But he’d been right. There were architects.
That woman over there, with the flint-and-gold necklace and the weapon at her belt, was an architect. So was the gray-haired tough picking over the buffet. So—interestingly—was the ethereally beautiful twentysomething waif who looked like someone’s trophy boyfriend. Tennal didn’t often meet architects his own age.
None of them were that good. They weren’t slinging around mental commands at the bar or anything, but Tennal could see it: architects gave off an aura, if you knew how to look for it, like light radiating from a star. The ones he was watching were pretty faint. They might be able to take over someone’s mind for a split second, but only if they really tried. Tennal was looking for someone else. Someone better.
Of course, every architect in here would be careful what they used their mental influence for. Using it on the wrong person in the street might get you a warning from law enforcement, but in here, it might get you shot. And architects had the acceptable kind of power.
Tennal was too sober for this.
He slid into a seat at the bar and smiled glitteringly at the bartender. “What’s free?”
There was usually something free at these things. The bartender paused and squinted at him suspiciously, as if Tennal didn’t look quite wealthy enough or dangerous enough to be here. Tennal didn’t show any signs of backing off, though, and eventually a shot glass came sliding across the bar.
Might as well ask. Tennal tilted his head at the dozens of conversations behind him and said, “So, which one’s the boss?” The boss might refer to any number of people in the city of Sanura, but in here, it meant the leader of this gambling ring, the one who owned this hotel. “I was told he’s an architect.”
The bartender’s hand stopped on the table. Tennal felt a sudden spike of wariness from them. They met Tennal’s eyes and shrugged.
At that point, someone tapped Tennal on the shoulder, and he flinched.
He tried to cover up the twitch as he turned. He had to get that kind of reaction under control. If the legislator had really found him, it wasn’t as if her people were going to gently tap him on the shoulder and start a conversation.
This wasn’t much better, though. A young woman in an armored vest stared down at him, her hand resting on a holster at her hip. This was somebody’s bodyguard.
There was no security at the door for this kind of thing because everyone brought their own security. If you turned out to be law enforcement, it was very simple: you left, or somebody’s bodyguard would shoot you. Tennal wasn’t law enforcement, though if they’d known exactly who he was, he wouldn’t have totally blamed them for shooting him.
“I don’t think you were invited,” the bodyguard said.
Tennal raised his hands in front of him, fingers spread. “I’m unarmed. Promise. Unless you count three tissues and a pack of soothers—and honestly, I’d have to get very inventive.”
She gave him a thin, unimpressed stare. Flint ear studs glinted under her short hair. “I’ve seen you before.”
A jolt went through Tennal. She couldn’t know. Could she?
Tennal’s mind was always a little too open to the universe. He wasn’t an architect, because that would have made life too easy. No, he’d ended up with the unacceptable kind of powers. He nudged his senses further open, just a fraction, and read her mind.
The instant he opened himself up, a dozen minds flared in his perception. The party was crowded; each person moved in a haze of their own moods like a shimmer of light. And if architects were faint stars, pulsing with intention and influence, Tennal was the opposite. Nobody had ever told him what his mind looked like from the outside, but he had his suspicions: an unsettling void, a black hole.
As far back as he could remember, Tennal had always been aware of a low-level drone from the minds around him. It was like an indecent form of tinnitus. Random impressions drifted in his direction, and if he actively tried, he could read them: vague emotions, nonspecific intentions, nothing particularly helpful. People’s surface thoughts were seldom interesting, in any case—right now, from the crowd in the room, Tennal could feel hunger, irritation, interest, boredom. All standard.
Reading that kind of background mental drone wasn’t illegal. Not quite. After all, it was only a step above watching people’s body language; he wasn’t going any deeper. Tennal focused on the bodyguard, looking for threat.
Nothing. She wasn’t interested in threatening him, and there was none of the prurient interest that would suggest she knew who his family was. She was just fed up with her long shift, overdue for a break, and Tennal was paranoid.
“I’m just here to ask a favor from the boss,” Tennal said, leaning back against the bar. “Is that a crime?”
He could have tried announcing the reader thing, but he needed to save that for when it would make an impact. Being a reader—they were rarities—made him just scandalous enough to be interesting, and Lights knew nobody was inviting him anywhere because of his delightful personality.
She gave him one of the most unimpressed looks he’d seen in his life, and Tennal was a connoisseur of unimpressed looks. “Ask the boss for what? Three square meals and a job?” She slapped a hand on the bar to get the bartender’s attention. “You should clean up and get out of here. I hate the ones who get in over their heads.”
Copyright © 2022 by Everina Maxwell